6 ms·

This is really fascinating (and troubling) statistics, but I can imagine what the explanations can be? Some of the possible explanations suggested in the articl

by olavk 8y ago

This is really fascinating (and troubling) statistics, but I can imagine what the explanations can be? Some of the possible explanations suggested in the article does not seem to correspond to the result. For example, if female doctors are better in general, then it should also affect the survival rate of male patients. If current medical research favors male patients, then it should affect the survival rate regardless of the gender of the doctor. If you are better at treating your own gender, then it should also affect women doctors treating men.

whateveracct 8y ago
I don’t have sources but I remember reading that heart issues manifest differently in women than men and that women weren’t taken as seriously when explaining their symptoms (indicative of heart issues) to male docs. I think that would explain why the reverse situation doesn’t arise.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- heartbreak 8y ago
  Like this [0] issue, but for heart problems specifically? How pervasive is this... [0] https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=fac_pubs https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi...
  - whateveracct 8y ago
    Yeah. Here I think is an article I’d read about it: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/heart-disease-women/412495/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/heart-dis...
sudosteph 8y ago
The article does provide a explanation that would seem to correspond to the result. > Still, she adds, the study raises many troubling questions about the treatment of women in the ER, “like the concern there’s a systematic bias where male physicians are not listening to female patients’ complaints as readily as [those of] a man.” Simply put, if social conditioning causes men to take the concerns of male patients more seriously than female patients (OR inversely, social conditioning makes female patients less likely to share potentially relevant information with male doctors in the first place), it would explain the difference pretty easily. Personally, I always prefer to have a female doctor when given the option. My theory is that even if only 0.1% of male doctors harbor a bias against female patients, and even if it's only a mild bias in most cases, I can avoid that chance pretty much completely by going to a female doctor. I guess it's possible for female doctors to be sexist against women, but it seems very unlikely given that most female doctors themselves would have experienced sexism against women at some point and thus would be more aware of it and more invested in overcoming it.
- olavk 8y ago
  But shouldn't this effect be across all health issues then, not just heart attacks?
  - sudosteph 8y ago
    Yes, and I have strong feeling it probably is. It's a hard statistic to measure in other fields though. Fatalities due to heart failure are pretty open and shut. For other conditions, especially in fields such as psychiatry, the effect of doctors not taking the symptoms of women seriously is more likely to manifest in the form of misdiagnoses, which can't be easily detected or tracked. Furthermore, many criteria for diagnosing diseases were developed based on primarily male subjects, so some conditions (such as autism-spectrum disorders) are somewhat underdiagnosed in women due to confusion over presentation in female patients. That isn't necessarily the doctor's fault, but the outcome can make it hard to distinguish whether the fault is with a doctor who dismissed a patient's symptoms due to sex, or whether it's just insufficient diagnostic criteria.
  - Avshalom 8y ago
    as another point of data: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-disparities-in-experience-and-treatment-2017100912562 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-dispariti...
- jerf 8y ago
  "Simply put, if social conditioning causes men to take the concerns of male patients more seriously than female patients (OR inversely, social conditioning makes female patients less likely to share potentially relevant information with male doctors in the first place), it would explain the difference pretty easily." But given the opprobrium currently attached to labeling someone "SEXIST" in our society, personally I'd like to see a bit more evidence, and some alternate explanations explored and ruled out, before we start wheeling that one out and tarring people with it. The other problem with that is more practical... if it "truly is" sexism, then you also foreclose any chance of fixing it, because there's just no way you're going to go to doctors and make them precisely 10% less sexist than they are now. But if it is in fact something else, it may be fixable. (Or illusory.)
skywhopper 8y ago
I'm guessing it's a combination. Heart attack signs and symptoms are different for men and women. But most of the awareness and training, especially in the past, has been more focused on the typically male symptoms. Add to that the likely facts that 1) women doctors are, on average, more recently trained than men doctors; 2) women doctors are probably far more likely to be aware of the differences in symptoms between the traditionally discussed symptoms and those that are specific to women, simply from a self-interest perspective; 3) men are likely to be a higher percentage of heart attack patients, so the effect of fewer men being as aware of women-specific symptoms of heart attacks would be amplified by the relative frequency of the occurrences (ie, they see few female heart attacks and so the differences in appropriate treatment are less likely to sink in with someone who doesn't have a personal awareness ("what if this were me having the heart attack?")). But yes I agree it's too bad these topics were skipped in the article in favor of less likely differences (such as "women are better doctors"--something that I wonder if it's controlled for age, but might just be the effect of the fact that women who do make it through medical school and continue to practice are probably just far more driven and serious about the career than similar men, because the obstacles women face in reaching the same point in their career are much higher, so the women who do make it through will naturally be better doctors than the "average" man doctor).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- klodolph 8y ago
  You're discussing things which are discussed in the abstract of the linked study... which makes it all the more frustrating that these things are omitted from the article. > Patients treated by female physicians had lower 30-day mortality (adjusted mortality, 11.07% vs 11.49%; adjusted risk difference, –0.43%; 95% CI, –0.57% to –0.28%; P < .001; number needed to treat to prevent 1 death, 233) and lower 30-day readmissions (adjusted readmissions, 15.02% vs 15.57%; adjusted risk difference, –0.55%; 95% CI, –0.71% to –0.39%; P < .001; number needed to treat to prevent 1 readmission, 182) than patients cared for by male physicians, after accounting for potential confounders.
- smogcutter 8y ago
cimmanom 8y ago
Heart attack symptoms differ in men and women. The most common ones in men (chest and left arm pain) are less common in women. Perhaps female doctors are more likely to be familiar with the symptoms of heart attack in women. Additionally, I think there's a stereotype of a heart attack being a male affliction (probably because the difference in symptoms led to underdiagnosis in women in the mid-20thC). It's conceivable that male doctors are less likely to consider heart attack as a diagnosis for a woman even when the symptoms are typical of a heart attack?

by olavk 8y ago

whateveracct 8y ago

I don’t have sources but I remember reading that heart issues manifest differently in women than men and that women weren’t taken as seriously when explaining their symptoms (indicative of heart issues) to male docs. I think that would explain why the reverse situation doesn’t arise.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
heartbreak 8y ago
Like this [0] issue, but for heart problems specifically? How pervasive is this... [0] https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=fac_pubs https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi...
- whateveracct 8y ago
  Yeah. Here I think is an article I’d read about it: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/heart-disease-women/412495/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/heart-dis...

sudosteph 8y ago

The article does provide a explanation that would seem to correspond to the result. > Still, she adds, the study raises many troubling questions about the treatment of women in the ER, “like the concern there’s a systematic bias where male physicians are not listening to female patients’ complaints as readily as [those of] a man.” Simply put, if social conditioning causes men to take the concerns of male patients more seriously than female patients (OR inversely, social conditioning makes female patients less likely to share potentially relevant information with male doctors in the first place), it would explain the difference pretty easily. Personally, I always prefer to have a female doctor when given the option. My theory is that even if only 0.1% of male doctors harbor a bias against female patients, and even if it's only a mild bias in most cases, I can avoid that chance pretty much completely by going to a female doctor. I guess it's possible for female doctors to be sexist against women, but it seems very unlikely given that most female doctors themselves would have experienced sexism against women at some point and thus would be more aware of it and more invested in overcoming it.

olavk 8y ago
But shouldn't this effect be across all health issues then, not just heart attacks?
- sudosteph 8y ago
  Yes, and I have strong feeling it probably is. It's a hard statistic to measure in other fields though. Fatalities due to heart failure are pretty open and shut. For other conditions, especially in fields such as psychiatry, the effect of doctors not taking the symptoms of women seriously is more likely to manifest in the form of misdiagnoses, which can't be easily detected or tracked. Furthermore, many criteria for diagnosing diseases were developed based on primarily male subjects, so some conditions (such as autism-spectrum disorders) are somewhat underdiagnosed in women due to confusion over presentation in female patients. That isn't necessarily the doctor's fault, but the outcome can make it hard to distinguish whether the fault is with a doctor who dismissed a patient's symptoms due to sex, or whether it's just insufficient diagnostic criteria.
- Avshalom 8y ago
  as another point of data: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-disparities-in-experience-and-treatment-2017100912562 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-dispariti...
jerf 8y ago
"Simply put, if social conditioning causes men to take the concerns of male patients more seriously than female patients (OR inversely, social conditioning makes female patients less likely to share potentially relevant information with male doctors in the first place), it would explain the difference pretty easily." But given the opprobrium currently attached to labeling someone "SEXIST" in our society, personally I'd like to see a bit more evidence, and some alternate explanations explored and ruled out, before we start wheeling that one out and tarring people with it. The other problem with that is more practical... if it "truly is" sexism, then you also foreclose any chance of fixing it, because there's just no way you're going to go to doctors and make them precisely 10% less sexist than they are now. But if it is in fact something else, it may be fixable. (Or illusory.)

skywhopper 8y ago

I'm guessing it's a combination. Heart attack signs and symptoms are different for men and women. But most of the awareness and training, especially in the past, has been more focused on the typically male symptoms. Add to that the likely facts that 1) women doctors are, on average, more recently trained than men doctors; 2) women doctors are probably far more likely to be aware of the differences in symptoms between the traditionally discussed symptoms and those that are specific to women, simply from a self-interest perspective; 3) men are likely to be a higher percentage of heart attack patients, so the effect of fewer men being as aware of women-specific symptoms of heart attacks would be amplified by the relative frequency of the occurrences (ie, they see few female heart attacks and so the differences in appropriate treatment are less likely to sink in with someone who doesn't have a personal awareness ("what if this were me having the heart attack?")). But yes I agree it's too bad these topics were skipped in the article in favor of less likely differences (such as "women are better doctors"--something that I wonder if it's controlled for age, but might just be the effect of the fact that women who do make it through medical school and continue to practice are probably just far more driven and serious about the career than similar men, because the obstacles women face in reaching the same point in their career are much higher, so the women who do make it through will naturally be better doctors than the "average" man doctor).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
klodolph 8y ago
You're discussing things which are discussed in the abstract of the linked study... which makes it all the more frustrating that these things are omitted from the article. > Patients treated by female physicians had lower 30-day mortality (adjusted mortality, 11.07% vs 11.49%; adjusted risk difference, –0.43%; 95% CI, –0.57% to –0.28%; P < .001; number needed to treat to prevent 1 death, 233) and lower 30-day readmissions (adjusted readmissions, 15.02% vs 15.57%; adjusted risk difference, –0.55%; 95% CI, –0.71% to –0.39%; P < .001; number needed to treat to prevent 1 readmission, 182) than patients cared for by male physicians, after accounting for potential confounders.
smogcutter 8y ago

cimmanom 8y ago

Heart attack symptoms differ in men and women. The most common ones in men (chest and left arm pain) are less common in women. Perhaps female doctors are more likely to be familiar with the symptoms of heart attack in women. Additionally, I think there's a stereotype of a heart attack being a male affliction (probably because the difference in symptoms led to underdiagnosis in women in the mid-20thC). It's conceivable that male doctors are less likely to consider heart attack as a diagnosis for a woman even when the symptoms are typical of a heart attack?